"'For what are all our contrivings,
And the wisdom of our books,
When compared with your caresses,
And the gladness of your looks?

"'Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,
And all the rest are dead.'"

"Well," breathed Peace in evident relief, as he lingeringly repeated the
last stanza, "that sounds a little more like it. Maybe with that book I
can learn her old poem now."

"Those are beautiful verses, Peace," he rebuked her.

"Yes, I 'xpect they are. I haven't got any grudge against the verses,
but it takes a beautifully long time for me to learn anything like that,
too." She seized the fat volume with both hands, tipped back among the
hammock cushions, and with her feet swinging idly back and forth, began
an animated study of the right version of the words, while the minister
strolled back to the house to enjoy the joke with Elizabeth.

But though Peace studied industriously and faithfully during the
remaining days, she could not seem to master the lines in spite of all
the minister's coaching, and in spite of Miss Peyton's struggle with her
after school each day.

"There is no sense in making such hard work of a simple little poem like
that," declared the teacher, closing her lips in a straight line and
looking very much exasperated after an hour's battle with the child
Tuesday afternoon. "You have just made up your mind that you will learn
it, and that is where the whole trouble lies."

"That's where you are mistaken," sobbed Peace forlornly, though her eyes
flashed with indignation as she wiped away her tears. "It's you which
has got her mind made up, and you and me ain't the same people. I just
can't seem to make those words stick, and I might as well give up trying
right now."

"You will have that poem perfectly learned tomorrow afternoon, or I
shall know the reason why."

"Then I 'xpect you'll have to know the reason why," gulped the unhappy
little scholar, who found the hill of knowledge very steep to climb.
"You can't make a frog fly if you tried all your life. It takes me a
_month_ to learn as big a poem as that, and you never gave it to me
until Friday afternoon."

"Nine four-line stanzas!" snapped the weary instructor, privately
thinking Peace the greatest, trial she had ever had to endure.

"It might as well be ninety," sighed the child. "If Elizabeth was my
teacher, or the Lilac Lady, I could get